Scientists use the geologic time scale to illustrate the order in which events on Earth have happened. They used relative dating to divide Earths past in several chunks of time when similar organisms were on Earth. Later, scientists used absolute dating to determine the actual number of years ago that events happened.

How does relative and absolute dating provide evidence of geologic history?

An absolute age is a number. Relative ages are not numbers. They are descriptions of how one rock or event is older or younger than another. Relative age dating has given us the names we use for the major and minor geologic time periods we use to split up the history of Earth and all the other planets.